Poison
by DigitalTart
Summary: The SHM have raised an army of Heartless in Midgar, and the two Keybearers are called into service to stop them. Unfortunately for Riku, the power of the Jenova specimen uncovers a secret that threatens to tear the trio apart. SoraRikuKairi
1. Accusation

_Author's Note:_

This fic contains tons of VIOLENCE, a lot of SPOILERS for KH1/2 and FF7, some NAUGHTY WORDS, a little SEX, and a smidgen of UNDERAGE DRINKING, depending on how you define the term. If such things offend you, you know where to find the back button. If things like plot or characterization offend you and you read fic _only_ for the sex, you'll find it in chapter 11.

I've rewritten a lot of this to more fully flesh out the FF7 canon for those that have never played the game (and fixed typos argh), so if you're still getting lost, point me to the spot and I'll try to fix it. I will assume you've seen Advent Children, though, if only for the SHINY SHINY BISHIIIIIIIIIIES, all the shit that blows up, or Cloud's bitchin' motorcycle.

* * *

It was _cold _in Radiant Garden. Riku had been out doing salvage work on the castle for hours, and everything from his ears to his toes felt frozen solid. The sky hadn't been able to decide what to spit on him, and all day had alternated between freezing rain and very wet snow. Not for the first time, he felt a twinge of homesickness for the brilliant island sun. It had been almost a year since Sora, Riku and Kairi had unanimously decided that after all they had seen, the friends gained and lost, and the battles fought, that the sweltering monotony of Destiny Islands was no longer home. He liked it here, he really did, but months of slogging through cold rain and then sheets of snow under an unbroken gray sky were beginning to wear on his nerves.

Still, even these annoyances were rather comforting in their mundaneness. This cold could be easily chased away by a crackling fire and something hot to drink. It couldn't reach inside you to stroke your heart with needled fingers, or ice over any hope of returning to a place of light and warmth. Riku shivered a little, then, and it wasn't from the wind. His time spent wandering lost in Darkness still tormented him, but the more days he put between then and now the more his dreams were pleasant ones, the more he could sit in a darkened room without imagining hungry yellow eyes staring back at him, and the more he could get on with simply _living._

By now his feet had carried him to the town limits without the input of his brain, he'd made this trip so often. Eyes fixed on ground ahead of him he stepped carefully around the ice slicks that covered the cobbled walkways. Really, he wanted nothing more than to run up and collapse in front of the fireplace in the living room, but running in this weather when night almost here was a recipe for potential disaster.

He was concentrating so intently on the icy ground, in fact, that at first he didn't hear the quiet scrape of boots that had been shadowing his path since he climbed the stone ramparts. The wind whipping through the streets drowned out most subtle noises, but even so Riku soon sensed the presence behind him, and, puzzled, turned to look but saw nothing. There hadn't been Heartless inside the town in months, and besides, if whatever following him was dangerous the defense system would have activated already. "Just a squirrel or something," he thought to himself, for small woodland creatures had started appearing in the area since Sora, Donald, and Goofy booted out Malificent and her minions.

He shrugged and shoved his hands deeper in his pockets, heading for the alleyway that contained the back door to the low, rambling apartment where he'd made his new home. As he turned the corner he thought he caught the sound of footsteps again, but when he stopped, they stopped. "Oh, whatever," he muttered to himself, and put his hand on the knob.

"You're not going to touch her," snarled a voice behind him that Riku didn't recognize. He whipped around and found himself facing a dark figure framed by the last of the ruddy sunlight, two truly enormous swords clasped in his hands. Before Riku could blink the man was almost on top of him, one of the steel blades arcing toward his neck. Riku yelped and dropped clumsily down before it could separate his head from the rest of him.

"What the hell is your _PROBLEM_!?" he yelled as he scrambled away from the man and tried to regain his footing. With a thought Way to the Dawn appeared in his fist, but against the two much longer, heavier blades he would have been in serious trouble in a straight fight. Of course, his attacker didn't know the Keyblade was not his only weapon, and he planned to nurse that advantage. With a speed that belied the heft of his weapons the stranger swung again, and Riku summoned the honeycomb energy shield to protect his left side. The two swords glanced harmlessly off with a ringing clang, and Riku took advantage of his assailant's momentary confusion to punch him in the face with the knuckleguard of his Keyblade. The man reeled backwards into a frozen puddle, sliding just a little—and Riku jumped on his chance and aimed a low kick at his opponent's knee. The two swords clattered onto the wet paving stones as his attacker suddenly found himself horizontal in a damp snowdrift.

Riku leapt to pin him down with a Keyblade to the neck. He got a good look at the man now, his hood having fallen back to reveal wild spikes of blonde hair and eerily luminous blue eyes which bored into him with a look of pure hatred. "Looks like I won," Riku said.

"No, you didn't," the man replied tonelessly, and Riku gasped as he felt cold metal bite through his coat and slice into the unprotected flesh between his ribs. The rest of the lefthand blade was still laying in the snow, but Riku could see now that what looked like one ornate sword was really made of a several interlocking blades of various sizes, the smallest of which had been separated from the whole.

They stared at each other for several seconds, unsure of the next move, until the impasse was broken by a female voice yelling at the top of her lungs from above their heads. "WHAT IS GOING ON DOWN THERE? HAVE YOU TWO LOST YOUR MINDS?!"

Both men turned their heads to the noise, and said, at precisely the same moment, "Aerith?", then looked back at each other and said: "how do you know her?"

After a few seconds of thumping the alley door opened and Aerith ran out into the dusky light. "Riku, let him up, and Cloud...I, oh for the love of...you're bleeding everywhere."

"This maniac tried to chop my head off," Riku said, gesturing with his chin. "I'm not moving."

"He's part of the Reunion…must have followed Tifa and me here, trying to strike where we wouldn't expect it," Cloud said.

"Riku, really, _get off_, and Cloud, it's wonderful to see you again, but don't start your visit by trying to murder my friends, " Aerith ordered crossly. "Brrrrrrrrr…we are not arguing about this in the snow. Come inside and clean up, and you can tell me exactly how this happened someplace where it's warm."

Reluctantly they withdrew their blades, Riku by releasing his into the aether from where it came and Cloud sliding his into the network of leather sheaths strapped to his back. Aerith took them both by the shoulder and applied a gentle shove in the direction of the doorway. Riku slipped inside first and took the stairs two at a time, followed more slowly by Cloud and Aerith.

Kairi was waiting for him at the top of the landing. "Hey Riku," she said, as he paused next to her peel off his wet coat. "I thought you might want some cocoa so I ma—why is there blood all over your shirt?"

"Ask that lunatic," Riku said, indicating with his thumb the figure coming up the stairs.

"Huh?" Kairi said. "Come on...I'd better dig out the first aid kit. That's not a paper cut."

After Kairi finished fussing over his injury—which actually hurt a lot more than he wanted to admit—and changing into blessedly dry clothes, Riku made his way into the warmth of the central kitchen. Kairi, Sora, Cid, Tifa, Aerith, and Leon were all sitting at the thick wooden table with mugs of various hot liquids in front of them (Cid was surreptitiously pouring something from an unlabeled flask into his), and talking animatedly. Cloud was slouched against a counter with a bloody handkerchief pressed to his nose. He eyed Riku suspiciously when he stepped into the doorway.

Tifa glanced up at the latest arrival and froze with her mug halfway to her lips. "Cloud…he's one of the…" she breathed.

Aerith cut her off by clearing her throat and smiling at the assembled residents of Radiant Garden. "Cloud, Tifa, this is Riku, a friend of our Keyblade Master. Riku, this is Cloud and Tifa, friends of mine from my hometown, Midgar, who just came in by gummi ship this afternoon. I assure you that whoever _you_ think he is, he's not, but I'm still not really clear on who it is that we're discussing, so can you bring the rest of us to date, please?"

Cloud and Tifa exchanged significant glances, and Tifa spoke up: "there's a big problem back home. Three of them, actually. Sephiroth seems to be gone for good, but it looks he's still got friends ready and willing to cause us trouble."

"Sephiroth?" repeated Riku. "Am I supposed to know that name?"

"I've met him a few times. Creeeeeeeepy guy," Sora said, then coughed and continued in a smaller tone. "He beat me up. Twice. Man that hurt."

"The original you met is gone," Tifa continued, "but several clones were also made, which, replicas or not, are more than Cloud and I can handle by ourselves. Just like Sephiroth, they seem to be searching for what's left of Jenova. And to make things worse, the Heartless are flocking to their power like flies to honey. Midgar and the surrounding area is an unholy mess. That's why we came back here for help. We're in way, way over our heads, I'm afraid."

"That doesn't tell me why Mr. Cheerful over in the corner tried to behead me," Riku said huffily.

"I thought you were Yazoo. Long silver hair, green eyes, dressed in black…it can't be a coincidence," Cloud muttered, mostly to himself.

Tifa stood up and examined Riku's face for a moment. "The likeness is uncanny, yes, but not exact. Riku's pupils are round like anyone else's, you know."

Riku rolled his eyes. "Are you going to answer me or not? I've never met this Sephiroth, never set foot inside Midgar, and as far as I'm concerned "Yazoo" sounds like the noise you make when you yawn and sneeze at the same time."

"The three Sephiroth clones—Kadaj, Yazoo, and Loz, well, they look a lot like you," Tifa explained. "I haven't the faintest idea why, since no friend of Sora's could possibly be one of them."

Aerith opened her mouth as if to add something, but quickly shut it again and looked away. No one but Riku seemed to notice. He, Sora, Cloud and Tifa went back and forth over the implications of this observation for some time, not achieving anything particularly productive. Cloud was insistent that he was somehow connected to the clones, which struck Tifa as unlikely but possible and Sora and Riku as utterly ridiculous.

"Wait, wait, wait, everyone," Tifa said eventually. "I have an idea…Cid, do you think we could use that supercomputer in Ansem's lab to analyze a DNA sample from Riku and Cloud and settle this?"

"We could try. Beats arguing back and forth over cold coffee," he said.

-----

Once they had all piled into the lab Cid spent a few moments riffling through drawers and cabinets to find what he needed, which turned out to be two hypodermic needles, some gauze, and a half-empty pack of cigarettes.

"You're not smoking those in here, Cid," Leon warned. "Delicate instruments, remember?"

Cid grumbled something too faint to hear but probably rather rude and threw the pack back in the drawer. "Fine. You first, kiddo." Riku rolled up his sleeve and held out his arm without comment. Cloud paled visibly at the sight of the syringe slipping into Riku's vein and didn't move to put his own arm on the table when Cid handed Riku a small square of gauze to press against the puncture. Cid cleared his throat expectantly and looked across at Cloud.

"I don't like needles," he said flatly.

"Nobody _likes _'em Cloud," Cid said, his voice thick with sarcasm. "Now give me your arm."

"No," he said. The fingers he had wrapped around the back of the chair were clenched so hard they were white and trembling, and his eyes had the glazed look of someone remembering terrible pain.

"For godsakes, I only need a little. Don't be such a baby."

"Cid!" snapped Tifa, her voice rising dangerously as she leapt to Cloud's defense. "Do you find what went on in Hojo's labs to be _funny?_" Sora, Riku, and Kairi looked at each other and shrugged. This was obviously a long-standing sore point about which none of them had the faintest clue.

"I…no, of course not…wasn't thinking. Sorry, Cloud. I didn't mean it like that. Um," he stammered, turning slightly red. "Hey Tron? Could you get the same results out of a cheek swab?"

"I believe so, but it will take longer to isolate since the sample would be contaminated with microbial DNA."

"We're not in a hurry," he said, and went back to the drawer for a cotton swab. "Say aaah."


	2. Revelation

Tron had their results ready the next morning after breakfast, appearing in the display with a wide yet disturbingly artificial smile once all interested parties had hiked up to the castle. "My computational abilities have not been utilized to their full potential since Ansem was my primary User. 'A good workout', I think you would call it?"

"Glad you enjoyed yourself," Cid chuckled. "You got what we need?"

"I most certainly do. From the blood sample I detected a .02 variance from acceptable human norms. To be entirely certain of the function of the anomalous sequences I would have to conduct additional simulations, but my preliminary results indicate that they are clustered in the neuro-muscular systems and provide the individual with an increased rate of ion channel depolarization, intramuscular lactic acid absorption, and endorphin production, among other things. The cheek sample contained a .009 variance in a similar pattern in the same areas, as well as radiation damage of a type the system was unable to identify. However, these genes seem at the moment to be mostly dormant, and their real-world expression will require further study."

The room was silent save for a few coughs and the creak of plastic chairs. Finally, Sora stood up and said: "None one else understood a word of that either, right?"

"Nope."

"No."

"Uh-uh."

"I remember something about endorphins from biology last year. Kind of…ish."

"My apologies, Users. I will attempt to explain in simpler terms. The human genome contains many strings of 'junk' DNA, evolutionary leftovers, that are never used in the day-to-day functioning of the body. The sequences I have isolated are highly unusual in that they seem to be vast _improvements_ over the sequences currently in use, and if ever activated would probably grant the individual increased speed, muscle strength, endurance, pain tolerance, or even psychic abilities."

"That stuff's in me?" said Riku incredulously.

"It seems so," said Tifa.

"I gotta, say this is an…interesting way to start a morning. But I'm lost. Why does Cloud have it too?"

"When I was younger, I was put through years of forced genetic recombination experiments by the military of my world, after Sephiroth…" Cloud looked down at this gloved hands, the muscles of jaw his rippling as he tried to force down the excruciating memories. "Never mind. That part isn't important now. But they took soldiers like me and mixed them up with alien genetic matter, what they called Jenova, looking for an edge in the arms race. They wanted someone almost superhuman, with the power of the Ancient race that once called our planet home.

Except they made a mistake. Jenova wasn't an Ancient. It was something else, something evil. Sephiroth was what they created, and after he snapped their leash they went looking for a way to recreate his power. That was when I was taken as a test subject, me and a friend from my squad. He was killed breaking us out of the labs. The others taken weren't lucky enough to escape with their minds or bodies even mostly intact."

The others unaware of Cloud's past—the trio from the islands, as well as Leon—all looked aghast. Kairi pressed her fingers to her lips in a mixture of sympathy and horror. "That's awful," she whispered. "But I don't understand what it has to do with our Riku."

"Neither do I," said Cloud. "I was hoping he could tell us. The only way Jenova's DNA would be found in a human being is if they were connected to the Ancients revival project. If you weren't, your parents must have been."

Every pair of eyes in the room turned to him expectantly. Riku sighed and looked away. "How the hell would I know that? I…um…ok—my mom is a biochemistry professor teaching at the Big Island university. I've never heard her mention it. And not that it's _any_ of your damn business, but…I don't know who my biological father is. My mom moved to Destiny Islands right before I was born and married one of the locals a little while after. She doesn't like talking about it."

"Weren't you curious? You must know something about him," Tifa prodded insistently.

"Oh, probably that he was an asshole, since Mom will never mention him?" Riku shot back, then continued in a less flippant tone. "I honestly don't know much else. I think they met at her old job, someplace she really hated, called, uh, Shinner Company?"

"Riku?" Aerith asked gently, "How old are you?"

"Seventeen. Why is this important?"

Aerith turned to Cloud with a blank expression on her face. "Sephiroth would have been in his mid to late teens seventeen years ago, and still at the facility inside Shinra headquarters. He would have been terribly lonely in the lab…at least I know I was. For him to look for companionship from the scientists working on the project isn't outside the realm of possibility."

"Your mother worked for Shinra? Oh no. No," Tifa said, shaking her head in horrified disbelief.

"That's disgusting," Cid threw in.

"I _told_ you he was dangerous, Aerith. If this is true it has to be…dealt with," Cloud said, with ice in his voice.

"Wait, wait, wait, WAIT," Riku yelled and shot out of the chair. "You all think my mother got knocked up by some kind of evil mutant alien? I…augh. You know what I think? I think you're all full of SHIT. And I'm not listening to it any more."

Riku strode for the door, almost knocking Aerith over as she stepped in front of him, pleading for him to calm down and listen. Once the door had clicked shut behind him, she straightened and massaged the elbow that had banged hard against the side of a terminal when Riku shoved her out of the way. "You three handled that _splendidly_," she said, affixing Cid, Tifa, and Cloud each with a withering glare. "Sora, Kairi, come on. He'd be more likely to listen to reason from you two than from me at this point."

-----

Riku was lying on the bed turning what Cloud had said around in his head over and over again. If not for the events of the last two years he would have dismissed it out of hand, but his train of thought kept winding its way back to that fateful night on the Islands when he'd first let the Darkness into his heart. It has been so easy, and at the time had felt so perfectly _right_. What if this Sephiroth really had passed some kind of taint on to him? What if that little crack in his soul had let the darkness slip in when Sora and Kairi seemed to resist it so effortlessly? From there, another truly awful thought occurred to him: stress a cracked glass often enough and hard enough, even if the imperfection is tiny, and eventually it will shatter. What if, some day, _he_ shattered?

Suddenly, his uncomfortable musings were broken by the rattle of the doorknob, followed by a loud thump and a curse from Sora. "Riku! Why'd you go and lock the door? That hurt my nose!"

"Please open the door, Riku. I want to talk to you," said Aerith.

"Not interested," he replied tersely.

Sora thumped on the door again, this time intentionally. "You know, I'm going to keep on being annoying 'til you open up," he said, and kicked it a few times to emphasize the point.

Riku knew from long experience that once Sora fixed himself on something, he got it, so before the younger boy could kick the hinges out Riku swung himself over the of the bed and flipped the lock open. He was rewarded for his conciliatory gesture by narrowly missing a kick in the shin from Sora. "Oops," he said. "Thought it would take longer to wear you down. Sorry."

"I'm sorry I shoved you, Aerith." Riku said sheepishly.

"You were angry. It's understandable," she said. "Can we come in?"

He nodded and sat down on the bed again. Sora flopped down on his right side and Kairi on his left. Aerith didn't sit, but looked out the window and fingered the gently glowing white stone she wore around her neck, pondering how to phrase her words.

"When I first met you, back in Traverse Town two years ago, I did sense a twinge of…something in you. I didn't recognize it at first, and after Xehanort's shade took over your body I lost it completely. It would have been like listening for a whisper in a hurricane, so until now I'd almost forgotten it was there."

"But there _is_ a something? A Jenova something? How do you even _know_ this?" Riku asked.

"I'm not…well, it's a long story, but I'm not entirely human either. There's old, old blood in me, Cetra blood, that's sensitive to things ordinary humans can't see, hear, taste, smell, or touch. The life force of a thing, let's say. Every person has it, every mouse, every bug, every blade of grass—even the planet we're standing on. Jenova is…different. Its life force is actively malevolent, and conscious. It was the great enemy of my people, who Cloud calls the Ancients. And I'm sorry, Riku, but yes, I sense a tiny, tiny black spark of it inside you."

Riku just stared. It made sense. A horrible, horrible amount of sense. "I've had that in me all my life?" he asked.

"I would guess," she replied.

"Riku," Kairi said softly as she put a comforting arm around his shoulders. "I don't have Aerith's mystical senses, but I do have perfectly good eyes and ears, and what they've told me is that you're a good person who once made a very bad decision. You've spent your whole life since then trying as hard as you possibly could to fix it. No one could ask more of you than that."

"In a sense, she's exactly right," Aerith said. "What I was going to tell you before you stormed out of the lab was that Jenova's influence, if it's weak enough, _can be resisted. _Which is precisely what you have been doing, and quite well, too."

"I guess this doesn't really change anything, then, does it?" asked Sora. "Riku knows what Darkness is like, probably better than anyone alive. He can use it without letting it use him."

Aerith smiled and nodded in approval. "Precisely, so I don't think—"

She was interrupted by a very loud musical chiming emanating from one of Sora's many pockets. He stood up and began to pat them down frantically before Riku leaned over and pulled a small silver phone out of the one over his left knee and held it up to him.

Sora blushed and put it to his ear. "Hi, Leon. I guess this means you and Cid finally got the radio tower working, huh? Aw, I wasn't trying to be mean, I know you're not an engineer," Sora said, smiling. A moment after, the corners of his mouth slid downward into an expression of alarm. "He did? When? Wait…what do you mean don't even know if they're still alive? Yes, of course we'll get down there right away."

"Sora, what was that?" asked Aerith, her face tight with concern.

"Leon just got an emergency message from King Mickey. He said he was on the line with Yuffie in Midgar, monitoring Heartless activity, when the channel totally cut out and he couldn't reestablish the signal. Leon's been trying too but couldn't connect either. That was a few hours ago, and no one's been able to get anything in or out since."

-----

"Me, Cloud, and Sora. Who else is coming?" Tifa asked, as she stood in the large docking bay, ticking off each name on her fingers.

"I am, 'cause I'm driving," yelled Cid from the hallway. "After that Pride Rock joyriding incident with the Highwind, Sora ain't getting anywhere near a gummi ship unless it's under my direct supervision." Sora mumbled another apology about it, the latest of at least a dozen, but didn't argue the point.

"Me too," said Aerith. "If the situation with Kadaj, Loz, and Yazoo is as nasty as you say, you're going to need a good healer."

"So am I," said Riku. "I want to know who these guys are."

"I guess that leaves me, Merlin, and Kairi to hold down the fort and relay any messages to the King," Leon said.

"Actually, that would be just you and Merlin," said Kairi from the back of the room. "I'm coming."

"Kairi, no!" Sora exclaimed automatically. "It's way too dangerous."

"Riku, Sora, come'mere. Exclusive Destiny Islands delegation conference," she said, and grabbed them both by the wrists and yanked them away as the rest of the group looked on in amusement. In a hushed yet rather fierce tone, she continued: "I'm not a fainting damsel in distress anymore that needs one of you to pluck me out of every unpleasant situation I find myself in."

"Of course you don't. Kairi, don't be ridiculous," Riku countered. Your being a 'damsel' has nothing to do with it. Yuffie can pound Heartless into the dirt like nobody's business. That's not our problem. But both us thought we had lost you for so long…"

"Yeah. What Riku said. I don't know what I'd do if something…permanent happened to you," Sora added, looking uncomfortable.

Kairi smiled wryly and put a hand on each of their shoulders, drawing them all into a tighter circle. "Guys…you think that doesn't work both ways? How do you think _I_ would feel if one of you didn't come back? And why do you think I've been spending all those hours sweating away down in Merlin's workroom? It hasn't been to drink tea and braid his beard, I can tell you that. I want to be able to help you like you've helped me so many times. Besides, he says I've been picking up spells twice as fast that slacker," she said, winking in Sora's direction "and this expedition needs someone who can handle serious offensive magic."

"Kairi, I don't know about this…" Sora started.

"We'll watch each others' backs. You two keep those keyblades whirling and I can rain down some delicious destruction from the Heavens. We'll be unstoppable."

"I hate to admit this, Sora, but she's got a really good point."

Kairi nodded with satisfaction and gestured to the ship. "Shall we? I've already loaded my gear and wand."

"You mean you had this all planned, whether we agreed or not?" Riku said. "You sneaky little…"

She laughed and skipped up the extensible stairway of the gummi ship, pausing to blow the boys a sardonic kiss before disappearing into the hatchway.

* * *

_Note to FF7 Purists:_

_I'm aware that Aerith is usually shown wearing the Holy materia in her hair, but this is an Important Plot Point. I will excuse myself by saying that in my version of the Kingdom Hearts universe, people are allowed to change clothes and do their hair differently every day. Kind of like you do._

_Like I hope you do, anyway._


	3. First Stirring

Riku jumped down the ramp of the ship and breathed in a hearty lungful of the new world's air. It was one of Sora's favorite rituals, one that he'd passed on to his friend once they were reunited. Smell was really a great way to get to know a place, he said—the richness of jungle greenery, the salt tang of the seashore, the sunbaked dust of the savannah. The kind of place Midgar was became apparent in less than a second as Riku found himself doubled over coughing from the corrosive industrial smog the hung perpetually over the city. Tifa walked over at him, looking rather concerned, and he finally choked out "You breathe this stuff?"

"Sorry, you three. You get used to it after a while. Kind of," she remarked, rather unconvincingly. Sora and Kairi, also used to the clear sea air of Destiny Islands, were having similar difficulties.

"I'm washing my lungs out when we get home," Kairi said, sniffling a little and wiping her burning eyes. Sora just made a face and sneezed five times in quick succession.

"Now you know why I don't live here anymore," said Aerith sadly. "Shinra Company poisoned everything."

"Who?" said Riku.

"Them," she said, pointing ahead of her. Two members of Shinra's Investigation Division of the General Affairs Department, (official alias "Turks", unofficial alias "the people you go to when there are throats to be slit or small children to be abducted") were waiting for them at the far end of the platform.

"The President asked me to report back to him when I'd gotten help," said Cloud. "Let's get this over with," and walked toward the two men near the doors. The others followed after him.

"Welcome back, Tifa," Reno said to her, or, more accurately, to her breasts. Cloud gave the redhead a venomous glare and his eyes snapped up guiltily. "The President is waiting for you. This way please." His partner Rude opened the heavy glass door and ushered them in.

"Sora?" Kairi said as they walked down the sumptuous marble hallway, "Is it just me, or does that guy remind you of Axel? Like, a _lot_?

"Excuse me," Sora said, jogging to catch up to Reno, "but do you happen to have a brother?"

"Huh? Who are you and why do you care?" Reno asked.

"Just wondering. Might have met him once. The hair's kind of a giveaway."

"I…_had_ a younger brother. He died a while back. Why? He owe you money or something?"

"Oh, no, nothing like that," Sora said quickly. "If it was him…he did something incredibly selfless for me, and if he is family I thought you should know."

Reno let out a short bark of derisive laughter. "Then I know it's not him. Leapold never did nothing selfless for nobody."

"Leapold…Lea…Axel?"

Reno just looked confused and shrugged in Rude's direction, who, as was usual, had no comment.

They could hear several male voices raised in heated debate through the double doors at the end of the hall, and as they got closer the shouting resolved itself into intelligible words. "With all due respect, Sir, there's no way we can make use of the Jenova specimen if we're all dead," said one. "Outside this complex it's a war zone. The cost in human life may be reaching—"

"It's too valuable, Reeve. I will _not_ destroy it," said another.

"This facility is protected by the best troops Shinra's got, and that Kadaj doesn't even know where we're keeping it. Stop worrying."

Reno stopped and motioned for them to wait while he conferred with the secretary sitting outside the doors. A few moments later he opened them and led the group inside. President Rufus Shinra, a young, ash blonde man in an immaculately tailored charcoal suit, was sitting at the head of the table, flanked by two dangerously _efficient_ looking individuals in identical black outfits with a holstered gun and a silver police baton each hanging from their belts. The man was in early middle age and in complexion bore more than a passing resemblance to Yuffie, while the woman was much younger and had pale skin and bobbed blonde hair. Several people in very expensive suits were sitting in the leather chairs that lined the table, while the focus of their debate was contained in a small plastic box in front of Rufus, the yellow biohazard trefoil emblazoned on all sides.

Riku felt his eyes drawn and held by it almost against his will. For a split second the room went black, and when it snapped back into place a throbbing pain above his eyes came with it. He felt himself sway a little on his feet, but recovered his balance before anyone else had noticed something was wrong.

"Excuse me, sir, but they're here," said Reno. All the people at the table turned to look at the assembled heroes. Rufus let his eyes linger the longest, and when he finished he looked profoundly underwhelmed.

"This is 'help'?" he said incredulously to Cloud. "Three children, an escaped lab rat, and an alcoholic ex-astronaut? If the entire strength of Shinra's military hasn't been able to deal with these creatures, you all will be about as effective in turning the tide as a short piss in the Midgar Sea." A fat man to his right began to guffaw, but shut his mouth immediately when Rufus looked in his direction.

"Hey!" said Sora indignantly.

Rufus pointedly ignored him and addressed Cloud. "However much I may personally dislike you, Cloud, I know you are an excellent soldier and until now trusted your judgment on matters relating to the Sephiroth clones. Unfortunately for me and the other residents of Midgar, it seems you have gone completely raving mad, and unless you have developed a brilliant plan within the last thirty seconds to stop the influx of these monsters, I want every single one of you out of my boardroom. _Now_."

"But we _do_!" insisted Sora in exasperation and held out his hand to summon Oblivion. "This is a Keyblade. I can use it to seal—"

Rufus stood and slammed his hands down on the mahogany table. "Just how delusional are you! Every minute of my time that you waste with parlor tricks and pixie dust, more of my men are dying. I need more troops and intelligence on these things, not little boys with magic swords."

"I know he's young, but he's an expert on the Heartless," said Cloud. "If you'll just _listen_ to him—"

"I'M NOT TAKING ORDERS FROM A CHILD! GET OUT!"

Reno and Rude moved to escort them to the door, the kind of escort that results in broken kneecaps if refused. "We're helping you whether you want it or not!" Sora shouted over his shoulder.

"Idiots," added Riku.

-----

A general council was called in Tifa's home when they landed in the slums beneath the shimmering glass-and-steel surface of the city. Destiny Islands wasn't a wealthy place, but it was at least friendly, full of green and sunshine. The underbelly of Midgar was drab gray and brown, the rare color coming in the form of garish neon signs and graffiti scrawled on the side of crumbling buildings. The streets were mostly deserted, the people holed up in the most defensible places they could find, trying to repel the Heartless that prowled the streets. Tifa stopped at a squat concrete two-flat and fished out her keys. The first floor was a bar, the plastic sign reading 'Seventh Heaven' (below it were neatly painted the words 'the second'). There were several people waiting for them at the tables inside, and hasty introductions were made.

Yuffie, of course, they already knew, and she greeted them warmly. A brawny chocolate-skinned man introduced himself as Barret. His faced was scarred and the hand that gripped his glass mug wasn't flesh and bone but a metal prosthetic that clicked and whirred faintly as he moved. Riku made a mental note never to make him angry. At the same table was a dark-haired and dark-eyed woman he introduced as his wife Tasha, who minded the bar when Tifa was away. Playing cards on the floor in the corner were the two children they looked after, both orphans, a girl of about seven and a boy slightly older. A tall, dour man in a red cloak leaning against the wall gave his name as Vincent and didn't speak again for the remainder of the meeting. The last of Cloud's companions was a red leonine animal under the table, which the trio only learned was a participating member of the discussion when Sora reached down to pet him, and, instead of being greeted by a wet tongue to the face, heard: "behind my left ear, please, and my name is Red XIII, not 'Boy'."

"You can talk," said Sora. "Hmmm."

He yawned, exposing two rows of sharp teeth. "That was disappointing. Usually people jump through the roof when they hear me speak for the first time."

Kairi laughed. "Back where we're from there's a duck that runs an ice cream shop. It takes a lot surprise us."

Their exchange was cut short by Tifa grabbing a heavy mug and pounding it on the bar. "All right, listen up. Without Shinra's cooperation our job just got a lot harder, but it's not all bad, since now I don't have to sit in the same room as that rat bastard Rufus and pretend I don't want to punch him in the mouth." That was met with a few cheers, and Tifa let them die down before continuing. "Since Sora's done this a few times, I'll let him take over," she said, and gestured for him to stand.

He rose and cleared his throat. "The first thing we gotta do is seal this world's Keyhole, which will stop more Heartless from coming through."

"What's a keyhole?" asked Barret.

"Hold on, I'm getting there. It's what this thing fits in to," he said, and called the Keyblade into his hand. "I point it in the right direction and it…does its thing."

"But how would we be able to find something like that? Searching the whole damn planet would take a lifetime."

"Don't worry," said Sora. "They usually make sure they're found without that much trouble. The area will have a lot of magic or history behind it, or better yet both, and once I'm there this'll guide me to the right spot."

"The Temple of the Ancients," said Aerith. "There isn't anywhere with deeper history than that."

"Agreed," put in Yuffie.

"We split up for this," Cloud said, rising to his feet. "Half of us stay to defend the people down here from the Heartless, and the Keybearers and one or two others go for the Keyhole."

"I'll take 'em in the plane," Cid volunteered. "Kairi, you coming? I've got room for one more,"

"You bet I am," she said.


	4. Recognition

The plane turned out to be an ugly rusted out thing tucked in an out-of-the-way hangar near the high city walls. "So this thing does fly, right?" asked Sora skeptically.

Cid gave him a dirty look. "You think I plan on killin' you kids? Just git in." The three of them, with some trepidation, did so. Cid taxied it onto the strip of decaying asphalt that served as a runway. After a tooth-rattling takeoff the little craft did indeed rise smoothly into the sky, and Riku had almost unclenched his fingers from the seat cushion when the air was pierced by a reptilian screech and something heavy slammed into them from below.

"Dragons!" yelled Sora.

Three draconic Heartless looped through the air beside them, and one broke off from the other two, wheeled around, and prepared to ram the plane again. Cid slammed on the rudder but wasn't quite fast enough. The second blow tipped them sharply down, and when Riku felt his stomach attempt to pole-vault over his collarbone he realized they were in freefall. Kairi screamed; he threw his arms around her in an utterly futile gesture of protection. The brown hills were blooming rapidly into the viewport, growing until Riku could just make out the tall clumps of weedy grass on the crests. At the last second Cid gave a heroic tug on the stick and they just skimmed over an outcropping of rock and shot back up into the blue.

Everyone let out an almost simultaneous sigh of relief. "Y'all okay back there?" Cid asked.

Kairi slowly and reluctantly untangled herself from Riku's panicked embrace and gave Cid a shaky "yes". The rest of the trip was mercifully dull, and soon enough they touched down on the verdant island that held the Temple. Even the usually garrulous Sora was awed into silence by the sight. Rising out of the jungle was an enormous ziggurat encircled in a once sturdy but now crumbling wall. Strangler fig trees had taken hold in the nooks and crannies to drape the structure in sinuous gray roots, and tiny jewel-toned birds perched in their branches. Monkeys clambered over carvings worn away by the thousands of years of raindrops beating on the stone. The whole place seemed simultaneously lonely yet bursting with life, haunted by the gentle ghosts of the Cetra as they watched over the myriad animals who had taken their holiest of places as home.

They walked up the bridge and into the darkness of the entry hall. "This is the place," said Sora softly. "But I don't think we belong here. We should find the Keyhole and leave as soon as we can."

"I know what you mean," said Kairi. "The air is almost…heavy in here."

"Let's split up. One of you can take the left passage, and one the right. Com'mon, Sora. There's some things about Shinra I want to fill you in on," said Cid, and hefted his spear.

Sora looked like he was about to object to the matchup, but Cid had already started a good ways down the hall, so he turned around and jogged to catch up. "Guess that leaves us with that one," said Kairi.

"Oh," said Riku, who was only half paying attention. His inexplicable headache, which had ebbed considerably since they left Shinra Headquarters, had returned with a vengeance at precisely the moment he passed the threshold of the temple. "Um…Keyblade. Right." He extended his hand to pull it from the air. Nothing happened. Kairi cocked her head curiously but said nothing. He tried again, focusing harder on the desire hold it in his hand like he had done almost a hundred times before. This time it popped into being exactly as it should have. Kairi raised her wand to the ready and kindled a small ball of blue light on the end. "Shall we?"

They could heard chittering and scraping echo down the stone passageways as they descended deeper into the temple, but nothing was brave enough to venture into their circle of witchlight. Riku could feel a very, very slight tugging at the end of the Keyblade, as if it was pulled by an invisible string, and did his best to concentrate on following it. They had descended through several levels without incident when something dark and gooey plopped down on the end of Kairi's wand, extinguishing the light. "Eeugh…gross!" she exclaimed, as it wriggled down her hand then jumped to the floor.

A sudden rush of air was all that warned Riku they were under attack; he ducked low and felt something pass over the back of his neck that left a few drops of cold slime in his hair. "Kairi, light!" he yelled. She recast the spell and gasped when it revealed a wriggling black mass poised above the archway they were about to pass under. At its center was the emblem of the Heartless, ringed by a splattering of lumpy yellow eyes and countless tentacles ranging in size from as thin as Riku's finger to as wide as his thigh. One of the larger ones darted for his face, and he sidestepped it and slashed downward. The end fell to the ground, but instead of lying there like it should have, it exuded six gelatinous legs and scuttled back to the main body of the creature. Kairi severed another easily with one strike of her heavy silver wand, and again the amputated tentacle did not show the least reluctance to leap up and dive into the shaft of another.

"This could be a problem!" said Riku as he swung his Keyblade around in a futile attempt to keep the things from grabbing hold of him.

"On it," she said, and called and a spray of fire that crisped three of the tentacles aiming for her ankles. It filled the tight space with a horrible smell but seemed effective; once charred the body could no longer split and reform. Kairi sent a wave of searing heat towards its eyes, and most of the tentacles withdrew to protect them, but not all. One snaked out whiplike at Riku's leg and yanked him off his feet. He hacked at it, but the severed ends of the slime arched over the Keyblade and reformed every time he tried, drawing him closer and closer.

"No you _don't,"_ said Kairi, and this time chose three long lances of ice from her repetoire and threw them at what she guessed passed for this monster's brain. Its charred appendages useless, it couldn't shield itself properly, and its bubbling shriek melted away as it dissolved like fog under the hot sun.

Riku levered himself up to a sitting position, holding his head in his hand. "You're not hurt, are you?" asked Kairi anxiously, and offered him a helping hand up. "You really don't look so good."

"It's just a headache. I'm fine" he snapped at her, and rose without her assistance.

Kairi looked taken aback and withdrew the offered hand to place it on her hip. "You don't have to bite my head off. I only wanted to be sure you were okay."

"I am, so let's just _go, _alright?"

They reached the room that held the keyhole about ten minutes after Sora did, who was sitting on a broken pillar fiddling with the charm on his Keyblade. "Bout time you came by," he said smugly. "I wasn't expecting it to be this easy."

"Easy? That's because you left the hard work to me, like always," Riku said.

"What's that supposed to mean? I wasn't—" Sora started.

"Just shut it, okay, Sora? And let's get out of here. This place gives me the creeps."

Sora dropped back a little to confer quietly with Kairi while they retraced their steps back to the entrance hall. "Kairi, do you have any idea what that was about?"

"We found a giant blob of killer snot on the way to the Keyhole. It took a little while to dispatch," she replied.

"No, I meant why Riku went nuts over it."

"Oh, that part. He told me he had a headache…you know how snippy he gets when he's not feeling well."

"Mmmm…that makes sense, I guess. I'll see if Aerith can fix him up with something when we get back to the city."

'Back to the city' ended up taking nearly an hour longer than the outbound trip thanks to a strong headwind, and it was past midnight when the plane touched down outside Midgar. Riku couldn't manage to fall asleep on the uncomfortable seats and was completely exhausted, his head still hurt, and he was angry at himself for snapping at Kairi and Sora but couldn't bring himself to apologize. In addition to the revelation that morning he was probably some kind of evil mutant freak, one that Cloud seemed itching to rub out if given half the chance, it had been a uniformly terrible day. Then it got worse.

"So this is the Keyblade Master?" said a voice from the darkness. "The Heartless have told me so much about you, though I must say, I was expecting him to be a little…taller." Riku caught sight of two green eyes above him that flashed in the dark like a cat's. In a few moments his night vision resolved the shadows into distinct shapes, and their owner was revealed to be young man in black lounging on the nose of one of the planes, kicking it idly with the heels of his boots like a bored child. He felt a strange surge of recognition for this boy, almost seeing a slightly younger version of himself in the green eyes and silver hair. But no…it was more than that. It was deeper, in a way that he couldn't put into words, something that he found both fascinating and repulsive all at once.

"Get off my goddamn plane, Kadaj!" yelled Cid.

He giggled. "Or you'll what, Old Man? You couldn't possibly take me on all by yourself. I'd worry for your heart."

"You're Kadaj?" said Sora. "Why are you doing this? Whatever this 'Jenova' is you're searching for, the Heartless aren't the way to find it. They'll turn on you as soon as you slip and destroy this entire planet!"

"And what gave you the impression that I care? This planet is a tool, like the Heartless. A simple means to an end—to reach the Promised Land that Mother has been seeking for so long."

"Whatever_ that_ is, it's not a fair trade. Nothing could possibly be worth that many lives," said Kairi.

"A 'fair trade'. Really. Do you know what Shinra Electric Company actually does? You must have seen their reactors. Do you know what they burn?" Kadaj asked, and didn't pause for an answer. "The energy that makes life itself possible. They've pulled out the lifeblood of their world so they can use it to power their scheming and their petty wars, their lust and their vice. These miserable ants you are trying so desperately to save from me are doing exactly the same thing. They're a poison."

Cid ground his teeth but said nothing to contradict him. With dawning horror, Riku realized it must all be true. It was Kairi that spoke up. "Even if some of them are like that, there are always people who aren't, people who create instead of destroy, who try to fix things when they've gone wrong."

"Of course there are, of course there are. But they are so few, and so weak, always eventually crushed. Your naiveté is really quite charming, but I have other things to attend to tonight," Kadaj said, rising to his feet. "I only wanted to meet you. Now, if you like, you can play with the dogs." He raised his hand, and five enormous animals that bore only the slightest resemblance to something canine coalesced from the dust in the air. They were huge and skeletal, with longs spines rising from their shoulders, and had the black and red Heartless crest emblazoned on their chests. Sora, Riku, Kairi, and Cid, exhausted as they were, had little trouble fighting them off, but by the time they were done Kadaj was long gone.

-----

Everyone but Tifa was asleep when they returned to Seventh Heaven. "Did you find it? Is it sealed?" she asked anxiously.

"Yeah, no trouble there," Sora said, and yawned. "We met Kadaj, too. He really does remind me of Sephiroth. They're both crazy."

"Can we talk about this in the morning, Tifa? I'm ready to drop," said Kairi.

"Oh, of course," she said. "You boys can have my room if you want, though one of you will have to sleep on the floor since we're tight on space. Kairi can have the couch in the living room, and I'll take the one in the office."

"And I'll bunk in the Highwind, thanks for offering," Cid snorted. "G'night."


	5. Reunion

Riku gave Sora the bed, since after the encounter with Kadaj he was too restless to sleep. Something was pulling on his mind, something in what Kadaj had said to them in the hangar. The more he thought about it, the more it started to make sense. Why were they even here meddling in the first place? He'd felt the poison in this world himself, the way it burned his throat as he breathed, as he'd seen the barren brown hills around the city that supported only tenacious weeds. It was so unpleasant that Aerith, Cid, and Yuffie hadn't even wanted to return home, once there was a home to return to. A few contrary thoughts drifted up to jostle against these, especially what Aerith had said to him about Jenova's malevolence, but they were delicate things that popped like soap bubbles when he tried to catch hold of them. This place was a lost cause. It deserved whatever it got. He liked Aerith, and trusted her, but she didn't know everything. How could she?

Finally tired of tossing and turning on the threadbare rug, he kicked off the sheets and headed downstairs. Sora kept right on snoring and didn't hear him leave. He found a glass behind the bar and filled it from the tap, then went to stand by the shadows near the stairs and think. "Couldn't sleep either, huh?" Kairi said as she tiptoed down the stairs and spotted Riku leaning against the wall. She filled a glass of water for herself and padded quietly over to stand next to him. "Bleh…I think I'm allergic to this whole planet. My eyes won't stop itching."

"Huh," he said.

"Okaaaaaaay…Riku, is something bothering you? You've been acting weird almost since we got here."

"I have _not_. You're imagining things. I was just thinking about all these people…I mean, are they even worth saving from the Heartless? Look what they've done to this place. It's awful. Maybe Kadaj is right and it would be better to wipe the planet clean of them."

Kairi looked over at him, utterly disgusted. "If that was some kind of joke, Riku, it wasn't anywhere near funny."

A nasty chuckle bubbled up from his throat despite Kairi's reproach, and he took a step closer to her to lean his left arm against the wall over her head. She suddenly felt conscious of how much bigger than her he was. Before it had always made her feel safe and protected, to know that he would be willing to put his broad shoulders between her and any danger she couldn't handle herself, but now…why did she feel a cold trickle of fear in her belly? She gazed up into his face, as if searching for the reason, and in a heartbeat that trickle became a raging flood.

"Riku," she whispered. "What's wrong with your eyes?"

In a flash his right hand closed around her throat, smashing her so high up against the wall that the toes barely scraped the floor. She tried to scream but couldn't manage more than a strangled gasp. "I've said this before and I'll say it again," he began, in a disturbingly conversational tone. "There's nothing wrong with me, so if there's a problem, it must be with you. You've seemed like such a pest lately, always hovering and fussing. Sora too. I wonder why." His mouth curled into a terrifying, predatory smile, and for a long time he only stared at her, languorously moistening his lips with his tongue. Impossibly, his right arm wasn't even trembling as he pressed her even higher against the wall. Kairi was a slender girl, but there was no way he should have been able to hold even her slight weight up for so long with only one hand.

Her lungs burned with the craving to breathe, and black tendrils were beginning to creep around the periphery of her vision. "Sorry about this, Riku," she thought, and let her arms slacken and her eyelids flutter closed as if she were about to pass out (which wasn't more than ten seconds from the truth). His grip loosened slightly, which she took as her signal to snap her leg up and knee him in the gut as hard as she could. He grunted as the air was forced violently out of his lungs and dropped her. She tried to stumble away from him on shaky legs, screaming as loud as she could for Sora.

"You bitch!" he snarled once he got his breath back, grabbing her arm and whirling her around. With his other hand he grabbed her savagely beneath her jaw and slammed her head into the railing of the bar with a sharp crack.

"Kairi! Hold on, I'm coming!" he heard Sora yell from the bedroom upstairs. Riku left her where she fell and turned to the door. It was time to join his brothers.

-----

Sora charged down the stairs wearing nothing but his boxers and the Keyblade, but he was too late. Kairi's body lay motionless next to the bar, a dark smear spreading slowly down her forehead. He cried out wordlessly and ran over, half kneeling and half falling down next to her. Tenderly, he turned her on her back and almost shrieked with joy when he saw her chest was rising and falling in steady rhythm. At this point Tifa reached the ground floor and smacked on the light, with Barret and Tasha close behind.

"What the hell is going on here? She's not…" said Tifa, her voice thick with dread.

Sora shook his head. "No, but it looks like she's hurt bad. Get Aerith down here _now_. I don't have much magic left to help her." Tasha ran back upstairs to the phone while Sora slipped his arm beneath Kairi's shoulder and pulled her up close, until her head rested in the hollow under his collarbone. He was exhausted from the late night and fight with Kadaj's minions earlier that day, but even then could still dredge up enough magical energy for this. He mouthed the simple incantation, and a tiny circle of buttery light appeared in the palm of his hand as he held it up to her temple. It grew outward, rippling through white and green and back to yellow before folding back into itself and quickly disappearing.

Kairi stirred and moaned softly. "Sora?" she whispered hoarsely, then started to cough.

"Yeah. Right here," he said, and brushed a lock of damp hair out of her face. "Who did this? Why isn't Riku here?"

"It _was_ Riku. He lost it. I think he went to join Kadaj."

Sora felt as if the floorboards had dropped out from under him. "He did _what_? No…no way. You must not have heard him right."

Kairi stifled a little sob. "Sora, I thought he was going to kill me."

"You mean Cloud was right all along? About Riku, about Jenova, about the Reunion, about everything? There was no way I could believe it then, but…" Sora bit down hard on his lip to keep himself from crying in front of Tifa and Barret. "No, that's not true," he said, straining to keep his voice even. "He's wrong about one thing. Riku isn't a problem to be dealt with. He's our friend. If he can fight off Xehanort he can fight off Jenova. He just needs some help, that's all. As soon as you're healed up we've gotta go find him."

Tasha came down the stairs holding two sleepy, frightened children in her hands. "Aerith should be here any second, Kairi, don't worry."

Marlene pulled free of Tasha's light grip and ran over to Barret, who scooped her up in his undamaged arm without missing a beat. "What's wrong with your friend, Daddy?" Marlene mumbled into his shoulder. "Is she sick?"

"And why was there screaming?" added Denzel, rubbing his eyes.

"You don't have to worry about it, honey, it's over now," Tasha said, stroking his brown curls as much for her reassurance as for his.

Aerith came sprinting to their open door soon after, in her suede boots and a pink nightgown. Without a word to anyone else she knelt down next to Kairi, who was hovering precipitously on the edge of unconsciousness. She placed one hand on Kairi's head and one on her bruised throat and set to work. After a few moments she sat back on her heels and gave Barret and Tifa a thumbs up. Kairi lifted herself off Sora's chest and shook her head to clear it, and they both got to their feet. Tasha took that as the signal to shoo the children back upstairs, despite vocal protests that they were now awake and should be allowed to know what was going on.

"Do you know where Kadaj is staying, Barret?" asked Tifa.

"No, but Vincent might. He went off to do some recon after we cleared out most of the Heartless in Sector 6. That freak don't ever sleep."

"That little shit just stole my bike!" yelled Cloud as vaulted up the front stairs. "Why in the…Kairi?" He stopped in midsentence as he noticed the rusty stains splattered on her shirt.

"All this…was Riku," said Sora, still in a state of shock. "I think he's possessed…or something. I don't know. I…"

Cloud jabbed his finger hard into Sora's chest. "I told you he was dangerous. You wouldn't listen, and he almost killed one of us. Next time it won't be almost. He has to be stopped."

Sora's eyes narrow and he grabbed Cloud's wrist to shove it away. "I'm not giving up on him, not now and not ever. You have no idea what he's been through, and he can fight this, I know he can. If you're thinking of hurting him, you'll have to go through _me_." Cloud actually drew back slightly in the face of Sora's iron fury, a side of the younger boy he had never seen and under the carefree and bubbly exterior never would have expected.

"Stop, both of you!" Kairi said. "I don't know how we're going to break Jenova's hold on Riku, but right now we another problem. He was with us at Shinra Headquarters, remember? He knows where they're keeping the Jenova specimen, and if he knows, Kadaj is going to know soon too."

"Get everyone up and over here as of five minutes ago, and _find Vincent_," said Cloud.

-----

He didn't know where he was or where he was going, but he knew what lay at the end of the road…his brothers and his freedom. It was an almost physical hunger, this desire to be reunited with a family he had never met. This is what had been pulling at him every since he saw the plastic prison on the table at Shinra's headquarters. To know that this yearning would soon be sated—it felt _good. _

But not good enough to smother the thin plume of gut-twisting horror that wafted through him like smoke when he the events of the last two hours flashed unbidden in front of his eyes. Kairi…was she dead? Did he kill her? The tiny sliver of his true self was in agony, but it was all he could do to keep a hold his own sanity, never mind wrest control of his arms and legs back from this _thing_ that had awakened inside him after a long sleep a shade above death. It has risen so subtly, so skillfully, that at first he assumed its thoughts were born from his own mind and hadn't thought to call for help until it was too late. Yes, he had fought off possession before, and it was the hardest thing he'd ever done. But compared to Jenova, Xehanort was a tabby kitten to a battle-hardened tiger. She was so old, her malice as wide and black as a starless night, that he had no hope of defeating her, none at all. He could only hold on and pray that he wasn't drowned, and let this him-who-wasn't him have its way with his memories and his body.

The scenery sped by as the motorcycle chewed up the miles under its tires. The rocky hills gave way to shrublands, then meadows, then uncanny forest. The phosphorescent white trees lining the road were covered in a writhing, twisting swarm of lantern-eyed Heartless chittering mindlessly to themselves. The vicious doglike ones he'd seen in the hangar loped along beside him, pacing the bike, but made no move to stop him. Other shapes, much, much larger ones, shuffled through the forest, snapping fallen branches as they went.

Before him the forest broke apart around a small pool lined with decrepit white buildings constructed along vaguely aquatic lines. Their roofs spiraled into perfect points, and the bulbous bodies sprouted blunt spikes, an alien echo of the mermaid's comb shells he used to find as a child on the island beaches. They were nothing like the gleaming skyscrapers or corrugated iron shanties he'd seen in Midgar; they were like nothing constructed by human hands. He parked the bike on the shore and surveyed the area.

No one but the Heartless were there to greet him. He grabbed one by its wiggling antennae and addressed it with impatience. "Where are your masters?" he asked. It bared its teeth and hissed at him, then twisted up and tried to kick him in the face. He shook it hard and asked again. This time it pressed its lipless mouth into a toothy mockery of a smile and sniggered quietly, then pointed over his left shoulder. Before he could turn, he heard a mechanical click and two points of agony jammed into his lower back. The electricity at their tips sent his muscles into uncontrollable spasms as his nerves sparked and sputtered under the onslaught, and his legs and his grasp on consciousness buckled together.

-----

When he came to he was on his belly in the dirt, his wrists bound behind his back. There were two black leather boots next to his face; he couldn't yet raise his head to see whom they belonged to, but he had a very good idea. "He's a Shinra spy. We should kill him now," the voice above him said.

"He's also awake," said another, harsher voice, and a hand grabbed him roughly under the shoulder and dragged him to his feet, steadying him without any gentleness when his legs threatened to collapse again. He spat the grit out of his mouth with a thick tongue and raised his head.

"We're not going to do anything before he's introduced himself, Yazoo, that would be rude," said Kadaj, who was draped over an outcropping of mossy rock. He rose with a creaking of skintight leather and walked over to face Riku, reaching up to place two fingers lightly on his face and trace the outline of his jaw from one side to the other as he looked him over. "You were with the Keyblade Master, and for that alone I would have killed you already, but there's certain…something about you I think I like. It's quite odd, really. Now what are you? A messenger? A spy? A diversion?"

"My name is Riku. I'm here for the same reason the rest of you are here: to recover Jenova."

Kadaj placed one finger against his teeth and smiled up at Riku as if imaging the prospect of something delicious on his tongue. "I think you're lying. People who lie to me are punished, and I'm _very_ good at it."

"It's true. She showed me the way here. She guided me."

"But myself and my brothers are the only true children of Jenova left. If you are one of us, why didn't you hear Mother's call sooner?"

"I was too far away. But I hear it now," said Riku.

"Wrong answer." Kadaj's fingers slid down Riku's neck and jabbed into the nerve beside his windpipe. "Nowhere on this world is too far away."

Riku tried to recoil from the pain but Loz held him fast. "Aaahnnngh…I never said I was on this world. I came on the ship."

"The Heartless did report a breach in their blockade. Clever. Still not convinced," he said, and dug even deeper

"Rufus has Her with him, at the Shinra Headquarters!" he gasped.

_That _was finally enough to make Kadaj withdraw, and with that unspoken signal Loz released him. "Do they know you've come to me?"

"Yes. The girl found me out before I could leave," Riku replied.

"Then we'll have to move quickly. They'll also be reluctant to attack you. We can use that. Human sentimentality is a powerful weapon. Tell me—the one who killed Sephiroth, if we attacked Shinra, would he come to their aid? Or the weak-blooded Cetra woman who travels with him?" asked Kadaj.

"Not to help Shinra, but to stop us, yes," he said.

"Perfect."


	6. Convergence

It took several excruciatingly slow hours to locate and assemble every member of team, two of whom, Vincent and Red XIII, had no means of being tracked down save a methodical search of their favorite haunts. In a small stroke of luck in the midst of several disasters, they were together, and eventually Yuffie found them at the edge of the Wall Market hunting Heartless. They made their way back to the bar as quickly as they could, where an emergency war council had been called.

"I tried a dozen times to reach anyone with any power inside Shinra and warn them," said Cloud as he leaned against a table, a cup of very strong coffee in his hand. "Nobody picked up. Not even Reeve."

"The clones of them based themselves in the Forgotten City, but it's too late to head them off, now," said Vincent. "If Shinra won't listen to us, this situation will be almost impossible to contain. Their security measures were designed against human terrorists, not Heartless."

"And Rufus was too stupid to listen to the kid," said Barret in disgust. "I hope he wakes up to a big kiss this morning from one of those little fuckers."

"Why try to get at it at all? Let Kadaj get it out of Shinra's hands, and once he does we grab it and destroy it. Let him do the work for us," suggested Yuffie.

"But Riku could be killed!" said Kairi. "They have soldiers inside, lots of them, what if—'

"Even Shinra's elite squads aren't a match for the four of them and however many Heartless they're inviting to the party. That's our whole problem in the first place," said Cid.

"Yuffie's idea may be our only choice," said Tifa. "Kairi…you know that he may not even be in there anymore, don't you?"

"That can't be true," she said, but couldn't keep her a hairline crack of doubt from her tone. What Riku had endured had changed him from the boy she'd known for so long—smiles were more difficult to pry from him now, and his trust of anyone outside their circle had become a rare and hard-won gift. It had also made him one of the strongest people she knew, someone who could fight the demons inside and out, and someone who could win. But when he'd attacked her…she hadn't seen anything of _him_ inside at all, had she?

"Sephiroth used to be my commanding officer," added Cloud. "I fought under him and trusted him. Whatever he knew about duty or loyalty or compassion died when Jenova took him, and it nevercame back."

"Riku's different! He is! He…has to be," said Sora, shoulders drooping, as the horrible possibility shook even his usually unbreachable optimism. "Aerith?" Sora asked, pleading for any scrap of hope.

"I don't know, Sora. I'm sorry. I just don't know," she said.

"If Kadaj succeeds, he and his Heartless could kill thousands…tens of thousands…hundreds of thousands. I know he's your friend, but no one life is worth that many," said Cloud.

"I _KNOW_ THAT!" exploded Sora. After the outburst he seemed to deflate into his chair as the anger seeped away as quickly as it had come, making him look less like a powerful Champion of the Light and more like a deeply hurt and frightened boy. "It's just not fair. The Darkness took him away from me once already. I can't fight him again, not like this."

"We're wasting time!" said Cid. "I'm with Yuffie. We take it from Kadaj and torch the thing."

"We have to go. Now," said Cloud. "We'll do what we can to help Riku, but I can't give you any guarantees."

Sora was about to object again, but looked around at each tense face, one by one, and his fists slowly unclenched. This was their world, their home. His loyalty to Riku was anchored fast and deep, but the duties of the Keybearer came first. He couldn't let all these people die if it was in his power to stop it, even if it meant the unthinkable. It wasn't fair, but Cloud was right. "We go," said, defeated.

Kairi lingered in the room as the others bustled about organizing their weaponry and prepping the ship. "I'm scared for him, Sora," she said.

"So am I," he said, and looped his arm around her waist. She accepted the embrace gratefully and lay her head against his shoulder, her eyes stinging. They stood toe to toe without words, letting fear and hope mingle over someone who, for all they knew, was already lost.

-----

Their transport to Midgar, one of the last and largest stragglers through the Keyhole, was an unlikely amalgam of falcon, bat, and snake, but it was fast, sleek, vicious, and perfectly suited to such a mission. The air this high was thin and bitterly cold but preferable to the gateways of Darkness the Heartless had slyly offered to guide them through. Riku had traveled them before in Maleficent's company without coming to any harm, but she had been a powerful sorceress, one of the best. None of the Brotherhood save himself had any magical talents to speak of, and half of his were drawn from the Darkness itself and worse than ineffective against any creatures born of it. They would have been easy prey on the black paths, and so they flew.

Riku fingered the blade he'd laid out across his knees as the wind played through his long hair. He'd found he could no longer call the Keyblade at all, but Cloud's truly impressive bike had furnished a selection of swords of various weights and lengths to use as a replacement. Most were longer and clumsier than he liked, or had strange grips, but eventually he found one that fit well into his hand. He ached to use it against the ones who tried to hurt Mother.

Dawn was breaking. The sickly green glow of the reactors could be seen in a break in the cloud cover, surrounded by the network of pinprick city lights they powered. By his side Loz craned his neck, trying to catch site of their target, while Yazoo inspected his elegant twin guns for the third time and then slid them back in their holsters. A solitary Heartless popped into existence in front of Kadaj's perch on the neck of the beast and gazed up at him expectantly, hungry for the order to release their bloody chaos.

"The box is on one of the top ten floors," he instructed it. "Don't show yourselves until you've found it. Afterwards you may feed as much as you wish, but if you find the one called Cloud, leave him to me. Understand?" It bowed low and dove off, somersaulting neatly into the portal it opened for itself below them. Kadaj looked back at them and smiled. "She's calling us. Are you ready?"

"Do you even have to ask?" said Riku.


	7. Assault

The avian Heartless pierced the clouds to swoop down directly above the center of the city. One strike of its tail smashed the reflective window in the top tier of Shinra Headquarters to reveal a stylishly appointed conference room, every surface now strew with razor-edged glass. Kadaj handed the reins to Yazoo and leapt through the ruin of the window with Riku right behind him. The scurrying, tumbling Heartless led them through the corridors they had cleared into the heart of the building. The staccato beating of machine gun fire could be heard farther down the hall, punctuated by anguished screaming, but nothing moved to stop them—the automated defense systems and soldiers alike had been destroyed by their claws. Their prize was waiting behind a door marked VAULTS, which had been torn nearly off its hinges and bore evidence of huge claw marks.

Most of the Shadows were clustered around an imposing wall safe, the rest sucking greedily at what was left of the guards. Kadaj put his hand against the heavy steel door and shook his head. "They think this will stop us? Even I hadn't thought Rufus was that stupid. Open it." Several of them sank into the floor and slithered through the miniscule crack in the safe door, and the lock clicked through its sequence and the door swung open from the inside. The space was lined with drawers of priceless mako-refinement system schematics, formulae for materia synthesis, Cetra artifacts, DNA samples, and confidential reports; Kadaj ignored it all. He only wanted one thing, and this close to Her he could feel Her physical presence. Without needing to scrutinize the labels he chose a drawer and grabbed the box from its black foam cushion, running his fingers lovingly over its ridges.

"Let me see!" demanded Riku impatiently.

"Later!" he snapped back, and continued his single-minded study of the thing he had been seeking for so long. In the background the gunfire was getting steadily louder, which meant, against all odds, that the Shinra troops were regaining lost groundKadaj was so absorbed in adoration that he didn't notice the implications of the increasing volume, but Riku did.

"We have to go," he hissed at him. Kadaj shook himself from his reverie and tucked the box under his arm to run back the way they had come. The tread of many heavy boots echoed through the halls behind them, but the soldiers would never be able to catch them before they reached the breach in the walls.

Just as they passed through the door of the conference room the Heartless bird at the window keened and dove. "What the hell?!" said Riku. Glass crunch under his feet as he ran to the gap; he saw it make an ungainly crash landing at the base of the structure with a smoking hole in its wing.

"It appears your friends are here," said Kadaj, craning his neck upward. "We'll have to find another way."

Behind them the door slammed open, ablaze with gunfire. A bullet clipped his pantleg before Riku called his dark shield directly in front of the portal, and two of the blue-uniformed men were felled by the ricochet of their own rounds.

"Down!" Riku yelled.

They leapt. It was a long way to the platform below, a greater distance than any human body could take without snapping a bone. But neither of them were fully human, and they landed hard but relatively unscathed. This part of the structure was wide in the center and narrowed sharply into two pathways with a door at either end, probably meant for service crews and window washers. Kadaj started for the one nearest. Before they could reach it, an unnatural hot wind whipped up around them as the Highwind's thrusters churned the chill dawn air. Rubbing the whirling dust out of his eyes, Riku could just make out Sora, Kairi, Cloud, and Aerith jump onto the platform at the opposite end and run towards them. Kadaj had the presence of mind to call out for the Heartless, and pink spheres blistered all over the surface of the ship as they began to tear at its hull, forcing Cid to retreat and try to shake them off.

The door before Kadaj and Riku opened and disgorged a squad of soldiers led by a redhead in a black suit. Cloud stiffened in recognition and called out to him. "Reno! Help us keep them pinned!" He tossed off a mock salute, and at his order the soldiers fanned out in front of the exit. A few second after, the other door opened, and Tseng, who had been as Rufus's side in the boardroom, strode out at the head of another squad, weapons at the ready.

"Kadaj!" yelled Cloud. "You're trapped and outnumbered. Surrender."

"Outnumbered? You're joking." He tossed the box to Riku and drew his long katana. This had turned out even better than he'd hoped. The Heartless were an excellent tool but a treacherous one, and once Sephiroth returned there would be no need for them. Many had been destroyed in the assault on the tower, but there were twenty times that number still lusting for the hearts of the people in this city, including his and his brothers'. He didn't particularly care whether or not the humans died, but the more the Heartless fed the more their ranks swelled, and the warning that irritating Keybearer had given him might very well be true. He had no desire to risk his neck over it, since Cloud and his companions seemed so eager to rid him of this problem. "Come," he whispered. "All of you. Come to me now." The Heartless could sense his desire for bloodshed like a spider feels the trembling of a fly on its web, and as the vibrations sang up and down the threads that bound them to their chosen master, they began to move.

Riku smiled when he realized Kadaj's plan. "If you have anything important to say to me, Sora, Kairi, I suggest you do it now," he called out to them.

"Riku!" said Sora. "Please, if you can hear me, stop this. I don't want to hurt you."

"That's too bad," said Riku mockingly. "I have no qualms about hurting you."

"Even if that _thing_ is talking through your mouth, I know you're there," said Kairi. "We're not going to give up on you."

A prisoner in his own body, Riku could hear them, barely. The invading alien consciousness felt like a coating of slime—sticky, foul, muffling. He had retreated as far into himself as he dared, hoping that the errant scrap that was his real self would be declared a negligible threat and ignored until he was freed. _If_ he was freed. This wasn't the first time Sora had won the bet for his life against very long odds, but even the Keyblade Master was only human, and the more often he played, the quicker he would lose. Riku wanted desperately to warn his friends what was coming, but couldn't. He could only wait and hope that they were strong enough to withstand it.

The first of the horde to appear was a little thing, no bigger than a pigeon. It buzzed by Sora's ear and he swatted it to the ground with the Keyblade out of reflex, without ever taking his eyes off Kadaj and Riku. A few Shadows appeared and clambered over the railing, then a few more. None of Kadaj's enemies looked impressed.

"That's it?" yelled Reno, idly twirling his baton on its leather strap.

Kadaj just continued to smile. Kairi, who was closest to the edge, looked over and gasped. "Down there!" she screamed. The tower wall was black and oozing with the bodies of hundreds of Heartless climbing up the side like ants, a river of darkness flowing up to drown them all.


	8. Purification

With Cloud and Sora momentarily distract by Kairi's outcry, both silver-haired men attacked. Kadaj was fast, but so was Cloud, and he brought both of his blades up in ample time to block Kadaj's first swing. They spun around each other, steel flashing, a blur of black and silver. Kadaj spat taunts at Cloud—the traitorous elder brother, the failure, the coward too afraid of the unknown to embrace the power Jenova had once offered him. Cloud didn't dignify any of it with an answer; when once they would have stung him, perhaps enough to make him stumble, they meant nothing now. He'd faced his past, faced Sephiroth, and overcome them both. Jenova's poison had no hold over him anymore.

With the Heartless at his back Kadaj knew he couldn't lose, and to him this wasn't a battle but a game of pain. He wanted it to be humiliating, a punishment for Cloud's disobedience against Mother, just like she would have wanted it. Cloud killed Mother's favorite son, and he would pay. Kadaj drew first blood, nicking Cloud's cheek with the tip of his sword. The wound wasn't deep, but Kadaj knew it stung, and there would be more: many, many more.

-----

Sora didn't rise up to meet Riku's first attack but rolled aside, and his sword met nothing but air. Sora danced backward, trying to put some distance between them. In the next moment, Riku saw why. A white aura crackled around the outline of Sora's body as he called on the greatest power the Light had to offer him. Riku was almost blinded by its intensity and was forced to look away, throwing a dark miasma where he thought Sora had been standing to cover himself. The younger boy willed himself higher into the air to evade it easily, and Riku saw that his feet didn't even touch the ground when he dropped back down. "I said I didn't want to hurt you, Riku. But I will, if you don't give me any other choice," he said. With a flick of his wrist he sent both Keyblades that had been orbiting his body to strike hard at Riku. He deflected one, but the other hit, tearing at his leg. They came about again and again, almost too fast for him to avoid. He barely had time to throw off a fire spell at that blinding light, but his shot went wide and there weren't many more where it came from. The Riku-that-wasn't-Riku began, for the first time, to feel afraid.

-----

The Heartless were coming thick onto the platform now, the stream of black parting in the center around the two pairs of combatants to concentrate on breaking through the guards at the doors. The magically enhanced bullets the Shinra soldiers carried tore through the stuff of Heartless bodies, snuffing them out in an eyeblink. None wavered from their positions, even as one of their comrades, then another, then another was swept under the waves. At last Kairi found herself side to side with the dark-haired man, Tseng, the final member of the squad left her side. He had discarded his useless, empty handgun and was now facing the tide of Heartless with lethal grace using only his own limbs as his weapons. Kairi had never seen anything like it, but had no time to marvel. She realized he had purposely positioned himself between her and the rail, allowing her to use her magic freely. She continued firing off spells as fast as her lips would form them. Aerith did the same, obliterating Heartless with both magic and her expertly wielded quarterstaff, her gentle and yielding healer's nature gone taut as a steel cable against a threat to her homeworld and adoptive family.

Tseng was good, incredibly good, but against so many he didn't last long. A flailing Soldier launched itself with blinding speed at his side and gashed deep into his thigh with its claws. He cried out and fell to one knee. Two Shadows jumped on him and tore into his back, sensing the kill was near. Whoever he was, thought Kairi, he was willing to give his life to protect herself and Aerith, and that wasn't something that could be easily discarded. Aerith exchanged glances with her, and they both ran to him. Kairi stabbed both Shadows on his back through the head with her wand and Aerith knocked away another two away from around his legs. A lightning storm fountained up out of Kairi's hand, electrocuting everything within ten feet of them, but the black tide continued to boil over the railing. Tseng struggled up again, but it was plain that he could barely walk, much less fight. Aerith put herself in front of both of them, swinging her staff in wide circles at any Heartless that came near. Kairi's energy reserves were dwindling, and she wouldn't be able to protect them both for very long. "Hurry, Sora," she thought. "Please hurry,"

-----

In this form Sora was more than a match for Riku, even with the strength and speed Jenova had granted him, and they both knew it. Riku was bruised and bleeding, and his shallow well of magic sucked almost dry; for all that, he'd only managed to scratch Sora a handful of times. He knew that the boy was capable of much worse, but had restrained himself from striking a truly crippling blow. Whether it was out of love or stupidity, or both, he didn't know, but this hesitation was Sora's weakness. After all, he didn't have to win—he just had to keep on his feet until Sora's Light-born strength failed, or the Heartless took the door, neither of which would be long now.

Sora knew it too, and that he was almost out of time. He had hoped that Riku could find a way to shake free now that he and Kairi where there to help, but he couldn't wait any longer. A decision had to be made. Sora swallowed back his compassion, took hold of the whirling Keyblades and dove towards Riku. The teeth of one key caught in Riku's sword and wrenched it from his grasp, and the second Sora sent spinning at his other arm with enough force to shatter bones. The box fell from Riku's suddenly nerveless fingers, and before he could grab it with his uninjured hand, Sora called up a gust of wind that launched the box into the air high above their heads.

"KAIRI! NOW!" he yelled. She saw Riku's empty hands and the black speck in the air, and immediately understood. In unison they launched two almost white-hot fireballs, which instantly liquefied the heavy plastic and burnt the contents to ash. Riku reeled as if he had been physically struck and collapsed to his knees in front of Sora.

Kadaj screamed in agony. His control over the Heartless evaporated in that instant, and their ranks broke, unwilling to continue throwing themselves at prey with such lethal bites. Now…now there was nothing left to win for Mother except revenge. Kadaj, a dutiful son until the end, decided to take it on the one whose loss would wound his enemies' hearts the deepest. He charged screaming at Aerith and with one swing bisected the staff she raised to defend herself, flipped his double-bladed katana around again, and thrust it cleanly through her chest. "NO!" Cloud cried, and sprinted toward her. Kadaj drew out the blade and whirled to face him with bloodlust in his eyes, but before their swords met it was Riku who rose on unsteady legs and flung a dagger of dark energy at Kadaj that pierced his heart. He dropped where he stood.

Everyone on the roof capable of walking—Cloud, Kairi, Tseng, Sora, and Reno—converged to where Aerith had fallen. Cloud reached her first and dropped his swords to lift her and cradle against his chest, his expression slack with anguish. She was still alive, but her breath was coming in horrible, bubbling gasps. "Cloud, don't worry," she said, smiling faintly. "I can hear them so clearly. They've shown me how to touch it. You'll be safe now, all of you."

"Who? Touch what? Aerith!" he said desperately, but her eyes had already slid closed. The blood coursing from the wound bathed the white stone she wore on a thin chain around her neck, and as its pure white surface stained red, something happened. A few thin threads of light spun out of the center of the stone, followed quickly by even more, thicker tendrils. Cloud stared as they curled up his arms, making his skin tingle but not causing him any pain; they then shot outward to envelop the rest of people on the roof.

"What the…" Sora said, as two writhed around his legs and torso and even more flew through the air around him. "What are they doing?"

"Holy," said Tseng, leaning heavily against Kairi. "She called Holy. I didn't know..."

Five spears of light pierce Kadaj's motionless body, which seemed to evaporate into shimmering green mist that was quickly absorbed into the streams. They explored Riku as well, twining all around his unconscious form before withdrawing and moving on. Sora looked over the low rail to see them cascading over the sides of the tower like a waterfall, slicing through the Heartless clinging to the walls and dissolving them into nothing. Soon the roof was clear of the tendrils, which had spread out through the rest of the city seeking out any lingering Heartless and what was left of Jenova's sadistic family.

For all that this miraculous power seemed to be channeled through Aerith, it didn't heal her. She was completely limp in Cloud's arms and barely breathing. "Kairi, if we pool our reserves it might be enough to save her," Sora said, and Kairi nodded, tight-lipped and grim. They knelt down, one on either side, and took hold of each other's hands. Both bent their heads in concentration, pulling out every last particle of energy to pour into mending the wound. After several minutes they pulled away, both shaking with exhaustion.

"It wasn't enough," Sora whispered.

Kairi shook her head miserably. "I know," she said, hot tears slipping down her face, "but I don't have anything left."

"To hell with standing orders," Tseng said abruptly.

Reno gaped at him. "Sir?"

"Everyone, stay clear of the center of the roof. Reno, get the President's personal chopper from the south pad. We're airlifting her to the hospital in Sector 2. It was her blood that saved us all, and I will _not_ stand by and let her die." Reno nodded his assent and took of running through the nearer door.

Sora rose to see to Riku, who was lying unmoving on the concrete. He swallowed hard as his eyes took in the damage the Keyblades had done and knelt beside his friend. "Riku?" he said hesitantly, shaking his shoulder. "Please wake up. Please be you." At first he didn't stir, but slowly his eyes opened as consciousness trickled like water into the dry beds Jenova had left behind when Aerith's magic had scoured its influence from his body. Sora was immensely relieved to see that his eyes had returned to a wholly unremarkable round-pupiled green. He was free.

"Sora…" Riku whispered, "thank you."

"You didn't think we were going to give up on you, did you?" Sora said, eyes shining.

Riku didn't answer as he tried to push himself upright with his uninjured arm.

Sora pulled him up the rest of the way and threw his arms around Riku's shoulders, burying his face in his silver hair. Oblivious to his own injuries, Riku let him. Eventually Sora released him and drew back. "Can you walk? We've gotta move."

"I'll try," he said. The world tilted crazily when he stood, but with Sora supporting him he managed to stagger to the outer railing. Reno soon returned with the helicopter, a matte black military model, and set it down on the roof. Tseng, limping heavily and weaving a little nevertheless took the copilot's chair, with the others filing in to the cargo area. Riku collapsed on the floor with Kairi and Sora on either side, and Cloud carried in Aerith. The short trip was completed in tense silence. Cloud kept his eyes locked on her face the entire time, as if he could keep her heart beating through sheer force of will.

A team of doctors was waiting on the roof with stretchers to take Aerith, and after a short argument, Tseng as well. Riku was pulled away to another room and his injuries tended to with brusque efficiency, then, unable to keep his eyes open any longer, he fell onto the narrow bed and slept.


	9. Blessing

"Hey. Hey! Aren't you ever going to get up?" said a voice. "Riku! Hello?"

The first ray of thought that filtered down into Riku's sleep-fogged mind was that he hurt everywhere, especially his left hand, which ached abominably; the second was that the bed he was lying in wasn't his own; and the third was that he should probably open his eyes to see who was yelling at him, and, if possible, make them go away so he could go back to sleep. When he did, he saw it was Sora sitting backwards in one of the chairs next to the bed, hunched over the back with his head resting in his crossed arms. "Fiiiiiiinally," he said. "It's almost five in the afternoon."

"Where are we?" Riku asked muzzily.

"The hospital in Sector 2. Don't you remember?" Sora said.

Hospital? Why was he in the hospital? He hurt enough, he supposed, but that didn't seem right. No…it was because of someone else, someone he cared about. Someone like…"AERITH!" he cried, and bolted upright as the vestiges of the mist obscuring the memories of the last day burned away.

"Woah…chill," said Sora, standing abruptly so he could push Riku gently back down on the bed. "She's gonna be fine. The doctors fixed her up as well as they could, and Kairi's probably doing the rest right now."

Riku exhaled very, very slowly and let himself relax into the pillows. If she'd died…it was almost unthinkable. "Shouldn't you be with them?" he asked.

"I was, for hours," Sora said, as he sat down on the edge of the bed and leaned over Riku, braced on the plastic guardrail. "But I wanted to be with you for a while—you got beat up pretty bad."

"Why? Aerith needs your help more than I do. I'm not so bad off…it can wait until she's healed," Riku said, looking away.

Sora's forehead crinkled in confusion. "What do you mean, wait? Riku, you're a mess and I should know, because I was the one that did it to you. You could barely walk when Kairi and I pulled you out of the helicopter. Please let me fix it. I feel awful."

He looked so dejected that Riku couldn't, in good conscience, say no. "Fine," he said, shrugging a little. Sora was so _good_ at doing that to him, as open and guileless as a puppy, and just as difficult to refuse. No matter who he hurt or betrayed, consciously or unconsciously…none of it seemed to matter to Sora, who would follow him to the ends of the earth and beyond bring him safely home. To know he commanded devotion of that caliber, undeserving as he was, wove a sore little knot of unshed tears beneath his breastbone.

Sora took hold of Riku's left wrist, very delicately, and set to work. That slight motion sent the throbbing to an almost intolerable pitch, and Riku gritted his teeth to keep from groaning aloud, but quickly enough the pain melted away as the healing light of Sora's spell knit the broken bones back together. Deep cuts and bruises began to disappear under his hands as the spells filled the room with the subtle scent of unidentifiable flowers. It felt indescribably wonderful. His guard faltered the tiniest bit, and it let slip a solitary drop from the corner of his eye. He tried to wipe it discreetly away before Sora noticed, but wasn't fast enough. "Riku," said Sora, glancing up at his face when he finished. "Are…you crying?"

"You jabbed a bruise," he lied, and busied himself with pulling off the splint on his wrist so he wouldn't have to meet Sora's blue eyes, because if he did he would be in tremendous danger of breaking down and making a sniffling fool of himself. He continued to stare fixedly down on his hand, flexing it slowly to wring out the lingering stiffness.

Sora winced in sympathy. "I'm sorry I had to do that, but the Heartless were about to get through and I didn't have time to—"

"I know," Riku said. "You don't have to apologize. You weren't the one that failed last night."

"Failed?" he replied. "No, no, no, no…Riku, no one blames _you_ for what happened. You got caught up in something a hundred times bigger and older than either one of us. Aerith told me there's absolutely nothing you could have done—she was surprised you came out of it in one piece, never mind anything more."

"But I—" he started, but was interrupted when the door swung open and Kairi peeked her head in.

"All done? Good," she said. "That means I can do this." She skipped over to the bed and all but pounced on him, knocking him back against the pillows with an enthusiastic hug. It seems Kairi was in agreement with Sora in the placement of blame, or rather, lack of. Over her shoulder, he spotted Aerith standing in the doorway with Cloud at her elbow, still very pale and with dark shadows under her eyes, but serene. At Aerith's other side he could just make out the tops of two round black ears over the bedside table. "Your Majesty!" he exclaimed, and Kairi let him go and turned to the door.

"The chair, if you please, Sora," said King Mickey. Sora hastily moved out of the way, and he leapt up on it to stand next to Riku. "I'm terribly sorry I couldn't come earlier, but I had pressing business to attend to elsewhere in the worlds. You seem to have made out all right without my help—I see my faith in you was well deserved."

Riku sighed inwardly. That sounded hollow, even from King Mickey. The rest of them were the heroes. This whole mess was mostly his fault in the first place. Nevertheless, Riku forced out a smile to accept the compliment. "Thank you, Your Majesty."

"Your friends are quite exceptional as well. I had no idea you had such a powerful sorceress of the Light in your midst," said the King, nodding regally to Aerith. She smiled modestly.

"We have a what?" Riku said.

"The spell she cast, Holy," said Cloud. "It cured you of Jenova's poison and saved us all."

"I feel like I'm looking at everything that happened last night through a dirty window," Riku said, rubbing his eyes. "I remember the battle, some, then Sora did something that broke her control for a second, and I tried to stop Kadaj, then…everything went white. Just…white. It felt almost like walking through the doorway that opened in Darkness after Sora and I fought Xemnas."

"It was indeed," said the King. "True magic of the heart—I could feel it all the way in the castle, and it destroyed almost all of the Heartless in Midgar, which is more power than even _I_ have. I thought I knew all of the master mages in my kingdom, but I seem to have overlooked one."

"I'm not, not really," Aerith said softly. "Ever since I was a little girl I've been able to sense things no one else could, faintly, like trying to listen to a conversation behind a closed door. But as I was lying there in Clouds's arms I could feel myself coming closer and closer to their voices, until I could finally see their faces, each one. My mother was waiting for me, and her mother, and her mother, all the way back to the very first to come to this planet…they gave me their power. I was a channel, that's all."

"That doesn't make it any less extraordinary," he said. "We owe you a great deal, and I'd like to learn more about you and your people, but not now. Donald and Goofy will have a fit if I don't return soon, and I believe your friends have some festivities planned for this evening."

"Aw, man…you weren't supposed to tell _her_ that, Your Majesty!" said Sora.


	10. Release

_Author's Note:_  
Last Chapter! Maybe! Depending on results of POLL!

Do you want me to actually write the totally gratuitous M-rated Riku sammich scene?  
Choose one: Y / N / ONLY IF IT'S TASTEFUL / PEEEEEENISES!

I also have a special treat for my faithful readers (all two of you), in the form of this sketch of Riku I did while babysitting and colored when I got home. He is in his Organization XIII trenchcoat because I am sexually excited by oversize zippers. "s16.photobucket(dot)com/albums/b16/DigitalTart/". Replace the (dot) with a ".", because this site is dicktarded and not letting me post the url properly. It's the first one on the pile.

* * *

The news that Aerith and her friends had been the ones to stop the invasion had spread almost at light speed, and once they returned from the hospital Tifa quickly found her doorstep snowed under with gifts and well-wishers. There were so many that the bar had to be abandoned and the extremely private victory party relocated to the dining room of a small hotel nearby, whose proprietor was an old friend of Tifa's and promised to keep interruptions to a minimum. Most of Midgar was celebrating right along with them, from the Shinra soldiers and socialites in the upper rings to factory workers and street kids on the ground. Fireworks popped and sizzled from the streets both above and below.

A good time was being had by all save Riku. He fidgeted listlessly with the napkinful of cocktail peanuts in front of him and watched Sora spin Kairi across the carpet in a parody of a waltz, both of their faces pink and shining from the champagne Reeve had sent over as a one-man gesture of Shinra's gratitude. Aerith was resting on a sofa in the corner, giggling at some story of Yuffie's. Cid and Barret had opened up a bottle of something much stronger than champagne and were downing it to uproarious laughter. Red was wrestling with Marlene and Denzel on the floor with Tasha as referee, while Vincent looked on and tried not to ruin his dour image by cracking a smile. Even Cloud seemed to be enjoying himself, lounging in a plump chair next to Aerith with a glass in one hand and an amorously tipsy Tifa on his lap.

But for Riku the music and chatter were draining rather than pleasant, and the thought of indulging in the food or drink everyone else was consuming with gusto made him nauseous. Almost all of them had come over at some point in the evening to try to pry him from his seat, but every time he refused as politely as he could. No matter how much fun the rest of the city was having, his heart wasn't in it, and they finally seemed to have given up. Everyone else was occupied by now. They wouldn't miss him.

He snuck upstairs to one of the big suites the hotel owner had given over to the "Saviors of Midgar" for the night. Riku didn't count himself among this exalted number, but the man wouldn't take 'no' for an answer and to avoid further confrontation, he had relented. He pulled off his shoes and lay back on the bed, nursing the tangles of guilt that had wrapped themselves tightly around his insides. When he'd first come to Radiant Garden Aerith had done her best to help him through sleepless nights and anxious days as he limped through the painful business of repairing the damage the Darkness had done to his mind and heart. And Kairi…since the battle on the rooftops he could barely bring himself to speak to Kairi. This would mark the second time she had almost died at his hands after he had sworn to protect her.

But neither of them were angry with him. No one was, not even Cloud, whose animosity toward him had ended abruptly and inexplicably in the hospital. He wanted to do something, anything, to earn forgiveness, but Sora and the others insisted unequivocally that there was nothing to forgive. They were all smiles and reassuring words, treating him as if he'd just recovered from a near-fatal illness, not almost aided in the obliteration of an entire city. He was furious at himself for it all, but no one else had the decency to be too.

He didn't have very long to spend alone with his thoughts before the door creaked open and spiky-haired silhouette appeared in the golden glow of the hallway lights. "Hey, Riku. Trying to escape?" he said.

"No, I was just—" he started.

"Too bad," Kairi said from behind him. "I know you've got a good mope going here, but I'm afraid we'll have to spoil it sooner or later. Probably sooner." They both came in and got on the bed; Kairi slipped out of her shoes and crawled across to lie down nearest the wall and Sora sat on the edge.

"I'm not moping. I'm tired," he said.

"Riku, it's nine-thirty, and you slept for hours at the hospital," said Sora. "What's bothering you so much? It's all right. We won. The Heartless are almost completely gone from here and Jenova was toasted."

"But I hurt so many people, and it's not all right," he muttered into the pillow.

"You killed Kadaj before he could do much in the way of real damage. Doesn't that count for something?" asked Kairi.

"And y_ou_ didn't hurt anyone. That was Jenova," said Sora, who then lapsed into a long and uncharacteristic silence. He pulled loose the straps of his sneakers and shucked them off, then nudged Riku until he moved over and gave him some room to lie down as well.

"Can I ask you something?" Riku said.

"Hmmm?" said Sora.

"How did you know that destroying the box would free me?"

"We didn't," said Kairi. "We guessed."

"And what if it hadn't?"

"Don't ask us things like that, Riku, please," Sora pleaded. "Why are you punishing yourself? You didn't do anything wrong."

"I wish I could believe you," he said, and to his shame the tears he had tried so hard to dam up inside a wall of stoicism broke through and cracked his words into a sob. Sora and Kairi immediately moved to put their arms around him, silently, letting the warmth of their skin and breath speak everything that need to be said. He was safe here, as safe as he could possibly be, and free from judgement and expectation—especially his own.

Once the tears started they wouldn't stop. He cried for his missteps, for his inaction, for broken promises, for the terror of losing himself in the storm, for those he made suffer, and for relief that it was over. It took a long time, but finally his breath ceased to catch in his chest and his eyes dried. He filled his lungs with as much air as they would hold and let it out slowly, savoring the sensation of lightness that had been left behind. Sora handed him a wad of tissues from the box atop the dresser. "Feel better?" he asked, when Riku had finished with them.

"Yeah. I think so," he replied. And he really did; his mind felt clearer than it had in days, the accumulated mental detritus washed away by the deluge. He wasn't usually the weepy type and felt a little ashamed to have lost control of himself like that, but at least he knew that what happened would never leave this room.

They lay together in the comfortable silence of long familiarity for a few moments before Sora spoke. "Mmmm…remember when we used to fall asleep all tangled up like this in my parent's bed when they were away visiting my cousins?"

"Yeah. A king-sized bed seemed a lot bigger then," said Kairi. "Then there was that one time when you decided to stay up watching monster movies on their big TV and got so scared you refused to do any sleeping."

"I remember that," laughed Sora. "I made Riku check under the bed and in the closet with a broomstick to make sure nothing was going to eat me. You never were afraid of the dark, were you?"

There was an uncomfortable pause. "Maybe I should have been," he said softly.

"Riku, stop it," Kairi admonished. "We've been over this. Enjoy what's here and now, don't make yourself sick worrying over things that are over and done."

"Like what?" he whispered to himself.

"That's easy," Kairi said, and raised her head to plant a passionate kiss on Riku's parted lips.

"Kairi!" said Sora as he shot upright. "How could you…mmppphh…mmmmm…_mmmmm_," and his anguished protests trailed off when Kairi sat up to bestow one of equal passion on his.

"You're drunk, Kairi." said Riku. "I could taste it."

"Didn't you like that?" she pouted jokingly.

"If he doesn't wanna, you can kiss _me_ again. I'd be fine with that," Sora put in.

"No…I…that's not what I meant…oh, dammit," Riku stuttered. "I mean, of course I liked it, and I want you to do it more, preferably lots more. But you're full of champagne at the moment, and I'd like to be sure you're going to wake up tomorrow and want to do it again."

"That's really sweet of you, Riku, but I'm not _that _drunk, and I've been thinking about this for while—the champagne just, ummm…helped it along a little," she said, laughing slightly. "You two have been sparring over me forever, like it's a contest with only one winner. But you idiots don't seem to realize you can't 'win' me, and frankly it's getting on my nerves, because I really care about you _both._"

"Oh," said Riku dumbly. That option had never really occurred to him. Trying to one-up Sora over everything was too deeply ingrained, and he'd always assumed, in the back of his mind, that she was going to choose one of them some day. It would probably have fractured his friendship with Sora either way—something he truly dreaded, since he'd been tricked into it once before, and damned if he was going to go through that again. Sora's unwavering loyalty and inexhaustible cheerfulness were simply too close to his heart to give up. He cared about Sora. Very, very much, in fact. Maybe even…

"Can I add something?" asked Sora.

"Hmmm?" said Riku, and Sora bent low to press their mouths together in an experimental kiss. Riku stiffened in surprise but didn't pull away, and, emboldened, Sora slid his tongue over Riku's own, hesitantly at first but then more enthusiastically when Riku reciprocated in kind.

"You're smashed too," said Riku when Sora finally got up again, smiling a little despite himself. "But I think I liked that."

"Boys, I am shocked. _Shocked,"_ said Kairi mock horror. "You mean all that time Sora spent staring at your butt in PE wasn't because he was in awe of your incredible skill at lobbing a volleyball around the beach?" Sora's eloquent reply was to pull the pillow out from under him and throw it at Kairi's head. She giggled and grabbed her own, then took a swing at Sora, who caught it deftly and yanked it out of her hands. Caught suddenly overbalanced, she tipped forward and fell on top of Riku with a little "oof". It gave him a truly spectacular view of her cleavage.

A bright crescent smile forced itself out of the black mood he had been cultivating so carefully since he woke up, then a chuckle, then a real, hearty laugh that spread quickly to Kairi and Sora. After it died down, he said: "You know, everyone is going to be occupied for the next few hours," and slipped his hand around to Kairi's back to run his fingertips lightly up and down her spine.

"That is a very good point," she whispered into his ear.

"Seconded," said Sora.

Riku twisted the hem of Kairi's shirt in his fingers and began pulling it over her head. This was going to be an interesting night.


	11. Ectasy

_THIS CHAPTER IS M-RATED for a Sora+Kairi+Riku sammich scene and is not for people who dislike boys kissing boys (or boys kissing girls—I'm lookin' at you, crazy foaming fangirl with the YAOI paddle stashed in her sock drawer). I think it's a stronger piece of writing with the smut implied rather than shoved right in your face, but the Fans Have Spoken, so in it goes._

_Also there is the totally unsubtle implication that Tifa is bonking Cloud. If the thought of these two individuals having sex offends you to the very core of your being, pry your sticky fingers off the mouse and go get a life, because they're made of polygons and don't exist. Thank you._

* * *

Riku's head swirled with a mix of nervousness and hungry anticipation so well blended he could barely tell which it was that caused all his muscles to tense and his breathing to shudder ever-so-slighty in its rhythm. After a little bit of fumbling he undid the clasp of Kairi's bra, and she held the cups slack against her breasts for a few moments before sliding them off and turning to face the boys. They'd both seen her naked before, bathing together as children in the little pool under the falls, but it was never like this. The sharp angles and planes of the little girl they had known rounded into delicious new curves.

Riku reached up to cup one of her breasts in his hand and traced a spiral around her nipple with his thumb. She smiled as the nub hardened immediately and brought her mouth within a hairsbreadth of his only to brush past it, teasing, to climb over his legs and position herself in the middle. Her third kiss went to Sora instead, who happily devoured it. Now _that _was unfair. Riku took what she'd snatched away by looping his arm between her breasts and pulling her to her back to him. She didn't resist. He unzipped her skirt and she kicked it off along with her panties and socks over the side of the bed.

"How come I'm the only one who's naked?" she asked pointedly, fingering Sora's belt buckle. Sora and Riku both laughed and their clothes fluttered down to join Kairi's in the pile beside the bed. Two pairs of arms twined around Kairi's trim body, Riku's generously muscled and Sora's slender and wiry. Kairi tasted one mouth, then the other, back and forth, never settling, keeping them both ravenous for more. Riku's hands caressed every inch of soft skin he could reach until his hand encountered Sora's. The brunette ran his fingers up Riku's arm and down his back, coming to rest on one taut cheek. He untangled his tongue from Kairi's, raised himself on one arm, and pulled Riku up to a sitting position. Their torsos formed a pyramid over Kairi, who nibbled on the end of her finger and watched them lock lips with rapt attention. Kissing Kairi was good, but kissing Sora had the added thrill of being a little dirty, a little wrong.

By now he was hard and ready for something more than kissing. He let his mouth drop away from Sora's and bent over Kairi, testing the slit between her legs to see if she was ready for him. His fingertips came away slippery. "Kairi, I want you…" Riku whispered.

"I'm sorry, Riku, but…no. Not tonight. We don't have any condoms. Later, I promise," she said apologetically, stroking his face.

"That's okay. I can think of something else," said Sora, grinning impishly, and hooked his arm around Riku's chest to pull him around Kairi. She turned on her side to nestle against Riku's neck, her head pillowed on his toned shoulder, the inside of her thigh pressed against the outside of his. Her right hand slid down over the slick lips to play with herself, unwilling to wait for release.

While not wholly unexpected, what Sora did next made Riku feel very, very strange. It felt _good_, most definitely, but also _strange_. Sora wiggled down nearer the foot of the bed until his head was even with Riku's hips, and, wrapping his hands around Riku's legs, he lowered his mouth slowly onto the tip of his cock. It took some time for Sora to find the right technique to make Riku squirm, but once he did it took his breath away. A part of him was repulsed by the thought, another part ecstatic. He almost, almost told Sora to stop, but even though his mind was divided, his body no such reservations. It drank in the wet caresses of Sora's tongue, his hot breath, the feeling of his lips closing around the shaft.

Finally, he gave in. He _wanted_ this—to hell with propriety. He buried his hand in the tufts of Sora's hair and thrust in and out as deeply as he would let him go. At his side he could feel every tremor of Kairi's body as her pleasure crested in waves that amplified his own, echoing between them until it was so intense it tore a cry from his throat. A few more seconds and he came hard in Sora's mouth. He swallowed it and then wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

"Mmm…I want something inside of me," Kairi said. Sora was in the best position to oblige, and he moved closer to her so he could slide in first one finger, then two, between her legs. She guided him with panted words, with low moans, with the clenching of the sheet of muscle in her belly. Riku continued to hold her close, breathing in the faint berry scent of her hair and toying with her breast, lightly fuzzed and yielding like a perfect peach. Her fingernails dug pink crescents into the skin of his bicep as she neared her climax. She gave in quietly, gasping a little, but her whole body shook with the electric force of it. Something warm and wet trickled down Kairi's hand onto his side. Riku hadn't even known until now girls could _do _that. She flipped on her back, eyes shut, hands pressed to her belly, a dreamy smile on her face.

After half a minute or so pushed herself up and leaned back against the headboard. "Best for last, Sora, com'mere."

"No…I'll do it," said Riku, getting up.

Sora laughed. "I wouldn't mind going around twice. Just to be fair and all."

"Well, aren't you a horny little—" Riku started.

"SHHH!" said Kairi, who hastily clapped her hand over Riku's mouth. "I think I hear somebody!" Two voices were indeed leaking through the thin walls, a man and a woman. All three of them stopped to listen.

"Tifa took that room," whispered Sora, mortified. "What if she hears us?"

Riku pulled Kairi's hand from his face. "I don't think she's going to notice," he observed dryly, for a low, rhythmic pounding had begun against the adjoining wall, peppered with little shrieks of female laughter.

Kairi was trying desperately to keep a giggle locked behind her teeth, and failing. She took a few deep breaths, then pulled Sora down on top of her and wrapped her arms around his chest. "They can have their fun. We can have ours."

"Okay," he said, smiling, and wiggled down until he was comfortable.

Riku couldn't quite bring himself to put the intimate parts of Sora's anatomy in his mouth, at least not yet, and so returned the favor with his right hand. Judging by his reaction to Riku's touch, Sora didn't seem to mind. He couldn't stay still, his toes pushing back and forth over the sheets and his arms curling around Kairi's thighs. Sora's enthusiasm was infectious; making his friend's face crinkle up like brought a smile to his own. By the end he had given up trying to stifle his moans of pleasure, and Riku worked his fingers around the tip a little harder, a little faster. Shuddering a little in Kairi's arms, creamy white arced out from inside Riku's cupped hand onto his belly, and Sora finally relaxed.

"You were really…vocal, Sora," said Kairi. "Does that mean he did good?"

"Um-hum..hmm…heh," he giggled, a vapid smile on his lips.

Riku crawled up to the top of the bed and kissed Kairi then Sora on the cheek. "I'm ready to play again as soon as you are."

----

Sora had ended up in the middle when all had finally had their fill, with Riku and Kairi's arms flung arms across him and their fingers loosely interwoven over his breastbone. Despite all the sleep he'd had that day, he could feel himself drifting off, and beside him Sora yawned. "I don't have to go back to my own room, do I?" he asked Riku sleepily. "I like your bed better. It has a 'you' in it."

Riku chuckled into the pillow. "No. Both of you can stay."

"Good. I wouldn't get up anyway. Too comfy," Kairi said, and snuggle deeper under the blankets.

Riku felt truly happy for the first time in days, basking in the warm honey glow their exertion had left behind. This first time had been far from perfect: at times uncomfortable, awkward, sticky, or all three. It wasn't exactly what he'd expected, but neither was it disappointing. Lying there with them now was immensely satisfying, and not only in the basest, most physical sense. How many other people on any world could boast of a bond as deep as the one the three of them shared? He and Sora had both willingly given their lives to protect it, neither knowing if they would be allowed to return. Kairi had never been so harshly tested, and he hoped with all his heart she never would be, but if the time came he had no doubt what she would choose.

"Was this what love felt like?" he wondered to himself, but his eyes fluttered closed before he could come up with an answer.

* * *

_Please don't write me any irate emails about how "women don't squirt when the come, smutfic n00b!" Some girls do, if you tickle their G-spots enough. STFU, disbelievers. It's quite possible…I've done it._

_And I just wrote pages and pages of videogame characters having sex with each other, currently the intellectual property of Disney Corporation, no less. I feel unclean. UNCLEAN._


End file.
